PAGE 8 | January 19, 2018 | NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
NATIONAL
“Our most important campaign of 2018!”
President Trump: Year 1
Shannon Walker, President, Southwest Washington Central Labor Council
Thank you to our recent endorsers:
ElectGillespie.org
Democrat for State Representative WA-18 LD POS. 2
Paid for by Committee to Elect Kathy Gillespie,
800 NE Tenney Road, Ste. 110-345, Vancouver, WA 98685
“With your help, we can rebuild our country’s bridges, airports, seaports, and water systems,“ President Donald
Trump said April 4 at a Washington, DC, meeting of the National Legislative Conference of North America’s Building
Trades Unions (NABTU). A year after inauguration, there’s still no infrastructure proposal.
By Don McIntosh
In the end, it’s not what presi-
dents say or fail to say that mat-
ters most; it’s what they do or
fail to do.
Over 3 million union mem-
bers may have voted for Donald
John Trump in November 2016,
37 percent of union member
voters. In that vote, they defied
their unions’ recommendations,
but the labor-endorsed candidate
wasn’t popular among the rank-
and-file of many unions, partic-
ularly those that remembered
her husband’s role in passing
NAFTA.
Trump offered those voters
the first chance since 1996 to
vote against so-called “free
trade” at the polls in a presiden-
tial general election campaign.
Trump said American workers
got a raw deal, and he promised
to terminate NAFTA — or ne-
gotiate a better deal.
Trump also spoke often and
with gusto about a plan to spend
$1 trillion on infrastructure. He
was a business man, a devel-
oper. He courted the support of
working people.
But one year in, there’s little
to report on NAFTA or infra-
structure investment. Instead,
the president’s biggest achieve-
ments are a tax cut that goes
mostly to corporations, and the
appointment of a Supreme
Court justice who appears likely
to deal major damage to public
sector unions. Meanwhile, his
below-the-radar appointees
threaten to unravel worker pro-
tections at OSHA, the Depart-
ment of Labor, and the National
Labor Relations Board.
WHAT HE’S DONE
WHAT HE’S FAILED TO DO (SO FAR)
■ A truly massive tax cut to corporations, so massive
that even CEOs are embarrassed, and are giving out $1,000
checks to their workers. The new law cuts the nominal
corporate income tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent at a
cost of $1 trillion to the U.S. treasury over the next 10 years.
■ The confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Neil
Gorsuch, the fifth vote needed to make America a right-to-
work nation for public employees.
Both those achievements came courtesy (exclusively) of
Republicans in the House and Senate, including (in the case of
the tax bill) Oregon’s Greg Walden and Southwest Washington
Congresswoman Jamie Herrera Beutler, both of whom will be
up for reelection sooner than the president.
■ Green light to national right-to-work In the pending
Janus case, Trump’s solicitor general asked the Supreme Court
to ban union dues requirements for public sector workers
■ Executive appointees: corporate execs and anti-
union attorneys To run OSHA, Trump appointed FedEx
executive Scott Mugno, who led the Chamber of Commerce
in opposing numerous new OSHA rules. At the NLRB —
the agency you go to for help when you’re fired for talking
about a union — Trump appointed as top prosecutor Peter
Robb, the lawyer who wrote the memo that allowed Reagan
to fire striking air traffic controllers in 1981. And to the Board
that decides cases, he appointed Marvin Kaplan, who
drafted legislation to overturn Obama-era NLRB rulings, and
William Emanuel, a former partner at one of the nation’s
premier antiunion law firms, Littler Mendelson.
■ NAFTA rewrite Talks on a revision of NAFTA didn’t get
started until August. And the author of The Art of a Deal has
no deal to show for it so far.
■ $1 trillion on infrastructure During his campaign Trump
promised to introduce a $1 trillion infrastructure proposal in
his first 100 days in office. Fifty-one weeks in, no such
proposal has been seen. Nor was there any mention of
infrastructure on Twitter — until Dec. 18, when he tweeted
that the Amtrak derailment near Olympia “shows more than
ever why our soon to be submitted infrastructure plan must
be approved quickly,” [This was after the White House
proposed earlier in the year to cut Amtrak’s fiscal 2018
budget by $630 million.] To be sure, America’s infrastructure
badly needs reinvestment. Infrastructure includes things like
flood control levees, electricity transmission lines, ship
channels, highways, bridges, rail lines, pipelines, and water
systems. The American Society of Civil Engineers gives
America’s infrastructure a D grade, and says deteriorating
infrastructure is impeding the nation’s ability to compete in
the thriving global economy. Now there are whispers that
Trump’s $1 trillion infrastructure proposal won’t be $1 trillion
after all, but $200 billion. It would take the form of
competitive grants to states and local governments that
promise to raise new, infrastructure-dedicated revenue on
their own. In other words, the buck is being passed. The
federal government that once built the interstate highway
system and put a man on the moon now wants local
government to pay four-fifths of the tab, increasing local
taxes to pay for it.
SHOP LOCAL. AND BUY UNION-MADE.